AmaHandishala.com Patia Bhubaneswar

An online marketplace for quick service order and delivery of authentic Odia cuisine through our brand Amahandishala.com. Our professional tenure at various major cities of India like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai etc. made us stay as paying guests. During our stay we had interactions with people from various places all over India who had little or no knowledge about Odisha, keep aside Odia culture and cuisine. People discussed about several major cuisines like Bengali, Maharashtrian, Gujurati, Rajasthani and South Indian cuisines. Among all these cuisines, Odia cuisine was quite latent and unexplored and moreover neglected by native Odia residents as well. The only way to make a revival and recognition for this cuisine was by establishment of an entity that is indigenous for Odia food. The idea was to rediscover the love and identity for Odia food and augment it to greater heights. On the long run we aim to have a global presence all over the globe. The procedure and methodology also needed to be maintained with proper standards to obtain the desired product. The only place this could be started has to be at the heart of Odisha, Bhubaneswar which is our founding location. The name of the service is "Ama Handishala" which loosely translates to "our kitchen". The name appeals to the values, morals and emotions of every Odia household. It truly justifies the name of our brand. From the inception to launch of the venture it took us in an excess of six months. We had a lot of hurdles that had to be cleared like setting up a timeline for progress of the venture, incorporation of the company, obtaining office space, setting up prerequisites, manpower etc. As a non-tech based startup we didn't get any incubator or accelerator support. So, the entire setup was bootstrapped keeping the operating expenses and capital expenditures aside. The cuisine has so far stayed under the shadows not only in country but also in the state as well. Several other food, beverage and restaurant chains have stolen the limelight from the incredible Odia cuisine and have made it lustreless. Even though there are a few entities that have tried reviving the cuisine, the quest is still on for a formidable entity to make this cuisine expressive in every possible way. A few numbered dishes are available from a long list only by some selected restaurants with redeemable taste, quality and recipe on few selected festive occasions but with a hefty price for the customers. Downtown Bhubaneswar outstation office workers, professionals, students on campus and people who frequently have outside food are striving towards better and healthier options. Specifically, they are hungry for new meal options that are fast, healthy, interesting, and reasonably priced. Traditional Odia food would be a great fit, but no one in the area is offering it yet. Our business is a collaboration between two good friends: Tushar Ranjan Sahu and Raj Sekhar Subudhi. We haven’t bothered with job titles, but Tushar basically runs the think tank and executive management side of the business, Raj does everything with regards to the operation and inventory management, and Sujit handles the technology involved with our online marketplace. The most important and foremost challenges we are facing is with logistics management. As our product is delivered to customer's doorsteps, a requirement of a dedicated logistics team is imminent. Due to the heavy monthly burn and monitoring problems we have outsourced the delivery process which is quite tedious to manage. We look forward to get our on-board logistics team as soon as possible to solve this issue. In the initial stages due to lower revenue run rate, we have to meticulously contemplate over our marketing expenses. We need to look for cost effective but judicious customer reach out.